Outside the Beltway

Despite the Defense Department releasing its study showing that the effects of allowing gays to serve openly would be minimal, Senator John McCain isn’t convinced.

The Pentagon could have taken down WikiLeaks but decided not to. Out of kindness, I suppose.

Tonight’s topics: The fallout from the latest WikiLeaks dump and the Pentagon’s report on gays in the military.

Is there really anyone who can credibly argue at this point that the policy regarding homosexuals openly serving in the armed services is anything other than basic discrimination?

The Pentagon has spoken. Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell would not cause any real harm to the military, they have said. Now, the ball is in the court of the United States Senate.

Sarah Palin has taken to her Facebook page to raise “Serious Questions about the Obama Administration’s Incompetence in the WikiLeaks Fiasco.” They’re more interesting than I’d expected.

Democrats are now confident that they have the votes in the Senate to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but do they have enough time?

New details are out about the upcoming Defense Department report on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

According to reports, the Obama Administration is set to abandon the July 2011 withdrawal deadline that was set earlier this year.

The odds that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will be repealed anytime in the near future are fairly close to zero thanks to the results of last Tuesday’s elections.

Will the incoming “Tea Party” caucus in the House and Senate force the GOP to reconsider its views on foreign policy? Don’t count on it.

One of the last arguments against allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the military — that active duty military would be unable to serve alongside them — appears to have no empirical support.

To earn a Medal of Honor commit a multi-part act of near comic-book-style heroism and, more often than not, die. Pentagon committees then convene to determine whether your valor merits an award traditionally given for acts so brave that no one would have even thought to complain if the soldier had neglected to do them.

The Pentagon is looking at a system that would flag suspicious access to data, similar to the alerts by credit cards companies designed to prevent fraudulent charges.

In what is being described as the largest leak of secret documents in U.S. history, Wikileaks has made public more than 400,000 documents related to the seven year long Iraq War.

The Pentagon has reinstated Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell under procedures that will make the discharge process more difficult. Which is good because it doesn’t look like DADT will be repealed any time soon.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is once again the law of the land.

Jonah Goldberg observes, “It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building; four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took two years; the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days it takes longer to build an overpass.”

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates acknowledged in a newly released letter that the Wikileaks Afghan War document dump wasn’t as damaging as the Pentagon initially claimed. So what was the uproar all about?

The Pentagon has advised gay soldiers not to come out in the wake of a court order ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. This is a very pro-gay move.

Only days after a Federal Court Judge issued an injunction preventing the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy from being enforced, Obama Administration has asked for a stay and announced that it will be appealing the case.

American troops in Afghanistan are overindulging in the fast food fare brought in to raise their morale.

Once the province of science fiction, a car that can drive itself is now a reality, thanks to Google and DARPA. The implications are mind boggling.

Bob Woodward reports that President Obama was looking for options other than staying the course in Afghanistan. The military didn’t provide any.

The effort to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell suffered a setback in the Senate today that likely delays any further moves on the issue until after the midterm elections.

Over the course of a little more than two hours, the “Burn A Koran Day” story merged with the “Ground Zero Mosque” story in a bizarre media circus that seems to have accomplished little other than give press attention to a bigoted Pastor in Florida.

Robert Gates has been a reluctant Secretary of Defense but his impact at the Pentagon has been tremendous.

Fareed Zakaria argues that the fact al Qaeda has not launched a major attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 proves we overreacted to those attacks. I beg to differ.

How long will we stop annual commemorations on the anniversary of that horrible day?

Civilian control of the military means, oddly, that civilians control the military. And it means precisely that the military does not get to decide which civilians run the country.

The Pentagon, responding to obvious flaws in its security revealed by the WikiLeaks debacle, is working on a data mining program that will monitor employee behavior for suspicious activity.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has proclaimed, “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.” Is he right?

Critics of WikiLeaks have no affirmative proof that the release of tens of thousands of classified documents has gotten anyone killed. The truth is that we’ll likely never know.

Glenn Greenwald asks, “Why won’t the Pentagon help WikiLeaks redact documents?” For the same reason we don’t negotiate with terrorists.

Robert Gates says he wants to retire next year, but will the call of duty cause him to stay longer ?

Free parking is a very inefficient use of land resources that wouldn’t exist without government mandates and subsidies. Is it time to end the practice?

The GOP is playing a dangerous game with the anti-Islamic rhetoric that it seems to be courting these days.

Barack Obama has significantly widened his predecessor’s global war on terrorism, even if he’s no longer calling it that.

President Obama waded into the “Ground Zero” mosque controversy at a Ramadan dinner last night.